The Health Affairs Department in Jeddah has reopened a dental clinic for people with HIV after four years of closure. The clinic at King Saud Specialized Hospital will serve the whole of the province of Makkah, despite employing only a single dentist. “The delay in opening was due to the hospital dentist being enrolled in a higher education program, as she was entitled to do. We have now assigned another dentist to the clinic as well as an assistant,” said Dr. Sami Badawood, Director of Health Affairs. People with HIV say they generally seek treatment at private clinics where they tend to not disclose their infection, fearing that dentists will refuse to treat them. They are also led by financial concerns to visit cheaper clinics that are less observant of sterilization procedures, leading to increased possibilities of spreading the infection to other clinic users. Badawood said that dental clinics pertaining to the Health Affairs Department in Jeddah are subject to close scrutiny of standards concerning sterilization and infection control. Health ministry statistics show that there are 6,000 people living with HIV in the Kingdom.
